~ FYI.Sci.TEK

Frozen fecal bird flu types

But there are dozens of strains of bird flu in circulation in the wild, Kida told delegates at the meeting, organised by The Lancet. In a four year study, which is still ongoing, he and colleagues isolated bird flu subtypes from over 10,000 samples of faecal matter from wild ducks in Alaska, Siberia, Mongolia, China and Japan. The frozen samples were collected from lakes during the winter. The researchers found 49 different bird flu strains.

And when they experimentally infected pigs with these bird flu strains, many of them underwent genetic reassortment. Pigs are thought to act as a “mixing vessel” for flu and other diseases, where new combinations of genes from different strains can come together. The team has also created 76 other flu subtypes in the lab by genetic reassortment.

They have 123 combinations of H and N subtypes stocked as potential vaccine strain candidates. Kida believes these may be “invaluable” as potential vaccine strains and also for diagnostics. “Any subtype could get into humans,” he says.

Researchers now collect and test samples from individual birds — an effective but costly and time-consuming approach…. Lickfett believes he can greatly widen the scope of testing by instead sampling the water where the birds congregate during migratory stopovers.

Imagine 10,000 gulls in a pool of water, Lickfett said. The one gull you test might or might not have the virus. But if even one infected gull is in the pool, Lickfett theorizes, a sample of the contaminated water should detect it.

“Basically, it means you’ve effectively sampled all 10,000 birds in one swoop,” he said…. ”Michigan is on the edge of both the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways, two of the main superhighways for birds going south. It’s an ideal location for sampling both populations,” said Gehring.

Rural_Determination_summary_KARAC_meetingbook-FINAL-www.doi.gov (pdf file) The material below is taken from the regional advisory council packets. Sections related to rural determination have …Continue reading →